Homestar Saga

Chapter 120: They Know

The Vore Sphere hurtled through the void. A mass of nanomachines the size of a moon. It was decelerating at a rate that would liquify a conventional ship, but it would still be moving at a ridiculous speed by the time it entered the system.

Five thousand ships of the Vrrl Starfang Empire raced to meet it. Or slowed down, rather. After twenty three hours at maximum acceleration, the warships of the Empire had reversed course. Inertia had carried them far from the defenses the Confederation Military had prepared for Brilend Prime. The Warmaster's fleet had just come to a full stop, and was now accelerating away from the incoming Sphere.

"Are we sure this is going to work?" Yvian had been calm at the start, but tension and doubt had crept in over the last forty six hours. It didn't help that she'd been stuck in her voidarmor the entire time. The Skygem maintained a Lucendian atmosphere, which was mostly methane. She'd considered stepping off the ship and spending time in the Priderender's hangar bay, but Mims had reminded her she'd still need the armor. Vrrl ships kept their gravity half again as high as galactic standard. She'd been forced to drink recycled water and eat protein paste, and as for using the restroom... Well. The armor took care of that too, but it wasn't a comfortable experience.

"Isn't it a little late to be asking that?" asked the Captain. He lounged in one of the chairs they'd brought on board, monitoring the console they'd rigged up. The Skygem's way of seeing the void around them wasn't compatible with it, but Warmaster Scathach had kindly allowed them to patch into the Priderender's sensor suite. The console and its comm equipment were attached to a portable generator, one of forty that had been placed in the crystal ship. There hadn't been time to implement Scarrend's idea of installing a full reactor, but the generators fed a constant trickle of energy into the ship. They should be enough to keep Skygem alive if Yvian had to use the Pulse.

"I'm nervous, alright?" Yvian watched the Sphere growing closer on the console's holodisplay. "I mean, look at that thing. Can we really destroy something that big in under a minute?"

"You didn't hear when..." Mims tilted his head. "Right. You were communing with the ship."

"I'll explain again," said Scarrend. The Vrrl hadn't bothered with a chair. He loomed over the console, both sets of hands folded behind his back. "Each ship in the fleet is equipped with two Cascade Annihilators and a launching mechanism. It is enough firepower to destroy a planet a thousand times over."

"Cascade Annihilator?" Yvian vaguely remembered hearing the term, but she'd been busy convincing Skygem to send one of her Crystal Guardians to stay in City 43. The ship had two, and she wanted Shard to have access to one if Skygem was destroyed.

"In order to achieve the fifth Mafdet," said the Vrrl, "You have to expand the Mafdet. Improve our technology, or generate an insight no Vrrl has previously considered. New weapons are the most common entry, and the Cascade Annihilator is one of the more... extreme examples."

"What's it do?"

"The device creates a resonant entropic..." Scarrend trailed off, regarding the pixen for a moment. "No. I'll speak more simply. The Cascade Annihilator disrupts molecular bonds. The energy released feeds into the effect, spreading the disruption. The denser and more complex the material is, the faster the effect spreads. Breaking the atomic structure releases a vast amount of energy, mostly in the form of heat and radiation. One Cascade Annihilator can turn a planet into a ball of plasma in just under two hours."

"Oh. Crunch." A weapon to kill worlds. "I guess whoever came up with that earned their Mafdet."

"No," Scarrend admitted. "She was stripped of her Mafdet and executed."